Michael McAfee | PolicyLink | 2023 Skoll Award Acceptance Speech

Michael McAfee, President & CEO of PolicyLink accepts the 2023 Skoll Award for Social Innovation.
About PolicyLink
The constructs of race and racism have limited the effectiveness of American systems and institutions, suppressing the potential of our democracy and economy for over 400 years. Centuries of exclusion and exploitation have left nearly 100 million people in America-including 55 million people of color-struggling to make ends meet and preventing generations from realizing their potential. Inequitable outcomes across most dimensions of American society are not the result of the failures of individual people but are due to structural and policy failures that have created vast and growing disparities in wealth and opportunity.
The structures, policies, and institutions that were designed, whether explicitly or implicitly, to create inequity, can be redesigned to produce a different result. PolicyLink and the Winning on Equity Campaign aim to deliver transformative results for the 100 million people living in or near poverty by centering this population in designing and advancing solutions to the nation’s greatest challenges. PolicyLink is compelled to deliver on one unifying result: Ensuring all people in America-particularly those who face the burdens of structural racism-participate in a flourishing multiracial democracy, prosper in an equitable economy, and thrive in communities of opportunity.
Skoll Awardee Profile Page: skoll.org/organization/policy...
PolicyLink Website: www.policylink.org/
**Michael McAfee would like to provide attribution for the question he asked in this speech: “Who and what will you love into being?” this is a quote from Jean Oelwang, Co-Founder of Plus Wonder, inspired by Mr. Roger’s quote, “Who has loved you into being?”**
Awardee Bio
Dr. Michael McAfee leads PolicyLink, a national research and action institute advancing racial and economic equity by lifting up what works. He is responsible for achieving the result of all people in America participating in a flourishing multiracial democracy, prospering in an equitable economy, and living in a thriving community of opportunity.
During his time at PolicyLink, McAfee has played a leadership role in securing Promise Neighborhoods as a permanent federal program, led efforts to improve outcomes for more than 300,000 children, and facilitated the investment of billions of dollars in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. He is the catalyst for a new and growing body of work-corporate racial equity-which includes the first comprehensive tool to guide private-sector companies in assessing and actively promoting equity in every aspect of their company’s value chain.
Skoll Awards For Social Innovation
The Skoll Foundation presents the Skoll Awards for Social Innovation each year to a select group of social innovators whose work targets the root causes of societal problems that are ripe for transformational social change.
skoll.org/about/skoll-awards/
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